Anyone who thought that this would be an easy series…do you have your answer yet?
A day after the Giants eked out a one-point win on the defending National League champions, the Phightin’s turned around to pull off a 6-1 win to even up the series at one game apiece.
The only thing that was more ironic than the spelling of Cody Ross’ name spelled backwards (Sorry Doc), was another solo shot from Cody Ross on a pitch in the same place to break up another no-hitter tonight.
The man affectionately named “Little Roy” in Philadelphia, attempted to do it all with eight innings of work, only giving up three hits, striking out nine, with a 1.12 ERA, a hit and he scored a run as well.
The second installment of the three aces scored from second, running through the third base coach Sam Perlozzo’s stop sign to score the team’s third run of the night. When asked about what was going through his mind, Oswalt said that he read the ball well off the bat and had made up his mind to score. Halfway there he saw the stop sign, but it was too late to stop—his mind was made up.
Jimmy Rollins, who batted sixth, ended up in the right place, at the right time, clearing the bases in the seventh, on a double giving the Phillies a 6-1 lead that they would never look back on.
The last game Jimmy had a RBI in was on October 1st against the Braves, in which he also had four.
When asked if he saw any advantages to batting in that spot, he was very reluctant to commit his heart to the six-hole, but he did admit that, tonight, he was happy to be in that position.
Tonight, however, demonstrated to the Giants why it’s so hard to stop the Phillies. They will have to find a way to stop the offense of the Philadelphia Phillies for 51 more innings, while, simultaneously, defeating their lights-out pitching.
We saw the same thing last year in the World Series. The Phillies were able to take a lot of hype, compress it into a chip to place on their shoulder and take it into Game 1 to muster out a win. However, the odds were against them to be able to sustain that for another three games in a seven game series.
They sent their ace, who at the time was Cliff Lee, back out there to get them another win. But that’s all a seven game series would allow them…two wins.
The Phillies’ batters look to be heating up, even against Tim Lincecum last Saturday night. In the long run, though, if the Giants are going to beat the Phillies, they’ll have to shut them down—not outplay them.
If you let the Phillies get into a rhythm, it’s very rare you outplay them.
All in all, Game 2 is in the books and the Phillies won 6-1, the series is 1-1 and we’re catching a red-eye flight to San Francisco, for a Cole Hamels versus Matt Cain showdown at AT&T Park on Tuesday, October 19th.
The place to catch it, FOX; the time, 4:19 ET.
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